Rep. Jamie Raskin, member of the Oversight Committee, and his take on Comer’s flights of fancy:
If you are having trouble grasping my position it’s because so many people here are doing their best to obfuscate it.
Simply stated: “It appears to me that there is more than enough evidence to open a legitimate impeachment inquiry into Biden corruption.” To support that I linked to a whole bunch of documents that people in this thread have been asking for since it opened. Actual bank records, witness statements, etc. I’m accusing no one of being absolutely guilty of anything, as they are innocent until proven guilty. But there is a LOT of smoke.
Well, if that isn’t grounds for a fucking IMPEACHMENT inquiry I don’t know what is.
There is not any smoke. Just lies from lying GOP representatives. If you think there is ACTUAL smoke, link to the ACTUAL documents, and quote the SPECIFIC words you believe show possible evidence of wrongdoing.
There’s your problem, Sam. It isn’t smoke at all. It’s steam – the byproduct of water vapor and considerable hot air.
So, the fact that the folks who stole Hunter Biden’s laptop didn’t reveal all of what they stole is proof that he was doing evil things?
This is the danger of the passive voice. Yes, “information was hidden”. By whom?
I have no idea at all why President Trump arranged a sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan. But when did this shift to being about him?
Pay attention. This was a side point not related to the main thing. I explained this in my last message.
I am, you’re trying to pin the “sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan” on Biden when it was Trump that did that.
You didn’t look at them, did you? They contain lots of photocopies of actual bank records, and transcripts of whistleblower testimony.
Yes, and the committee is LYING ABOUT THOSE PHOTOCOPIES. That’s what I’m saying. The actual evidence doesn’t show what the committee is saying.
From Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member:
I should have known you’d all leap on the ‘Afghanistan’ comment. Once again I provided that as a hypothetical in the context of, “he shouldn’t b e impeached if what he did wasn’t during his presidency”
The point is that if you find out that someone has been bought in the past, you have no idea what decisions in the future might be part of a quid-pro-quo. I picked Afghanistan out of a hat, but it could have been anythiung. And it wasn’t a specific accusation that Joe Biden did anything, but was meant to apply to any politician.
And yeah, Trump promised the pullout from Afghanistan. That’s another reason I thought he was a shitty president, among many.
Okay. Let’s try and find common ground and work from there.
Corruption is too broad for me to work with. I’ll give some more specific propositions and you can agree or disagree with them.
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If there is evidence that President Biden engaged in a pay to play scheme, the House should open an inquiry.
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If there is evidence that President Biden engaged in a quid pro quo scheme, the House should open an inquiry.
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If there is evidence that President Biden abused the power of the office of President, the House should open an inquiry.
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If there is evidence that Vice President Biden abused the power of the office of Vice President, the House should open an inquiry. (I personally disagree but given Trump’s second impeachment, precedent says otherwise)
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If there is evidence that President Biden defrauded or helped defraud the United States, the House should open an inquiry.
Let me know if you think any of these apply, or if you have another similar statement to add. Then I can try and match your cites of evidence to the propositions, then I can evaluate the cites, and then I can tell you whether I agree with your argument or not.
~Max
This is question-begging. No evidence of having “been bought in the past” has been offered.
That Raskin write-up is very thorough. @Sam_Stone, I encourage you to give it a read.
I was answering the question, “If he did this as Vice President, should he still be impeached as President?” I offered an example of how any politician who was caught being bribed in the past was a risk in the future, because they may not have yet provided the services of a bribe. That is all.
What position of power did Biden hold when these payments were being made?
You can’t tie any of this to Biden’s time in office.
You’ve got nothing.
I hope the Democrats respond to this impeachment inquiry with testimony about Dick Cheney’s business activities after he ceased being George HW Bush’s Secretary of Defense and before he became George W. Bush’s Vice President. And remember he - unlike Hunter - actually held office.
I did. It seems completely irrelevant. One claim is the violation of privacy by making the SARs public. That may be a valid criticism of the Committee, but does not go to the guilt or innocence of the parties involved.
The next claim is that there are a lot of SARS, so it doesn’t mean much. But the number he includes, 2.5 million, doesn’t seem all that high given 300 million people engaging in multiple bank transactions per year. That’s far less than one SAR per person per century. Hunter and associates had 170 filed against them. Seems like a lot, but maybe not.
A more interesting stat would be how many SARs are filed against Washington lobbyists and players in a given year. That might tell us if Biden was an outlier or not. Do you have that information?
The third claim is that SARS can be erroneous and are preliminary. I have no problem with what. That’s why you do the investigation - to determine if there is anything going on.
What do you think I missed?
Ah, ok, I accept that. I do think it’s a heck of a stretch to justify impeaching a current officeholder for past acts that have not been shown to have any influence on that officeholder’s activities.
Umm, shouldn’t you already know that if you are going to claim this is some of the smoke that proves the fire???